The increasing pressures of modern existence have placed an emphasis on the effective utilization of time. Manufacturers must build products faster, distributors must get the products to retailers faster, and retailers must make it easy for consumers to quickly receive the products. Material and product handling plays a key role in facilitating this speed of delivery. Bottlenecks and/or inefficiencies in handling materials and products may upset the planned manufacturing or delivery of the products, and thus may cause consumers to consider other available options. The importance of this efficiency may be compounded in instances where automatic material/product handling (e.g., automatic or robotic warehousing) is being utilized as these resources may not be able to easily adjust or compensate for unplanned delivery delays. In another example scenario, products that are presented directly to a consumer for purchase may be arranged in a manner that facilitates easy selection and procurement. If these products are not arranged in a manner that is beneficial to the consumer, then the consumer may elect to consider secondary products that may be more conveniently arranged because they facilitate a more expeditious shopping experience.
In general, an arrangement may be “optimized” when changes are made that improve the performance for users. For example, in an automated handling system an arrangement of storage areas (e.g., bins, shelves, racks, etc.) may be optimized when the overall amount of congestion, bottlenecks is reduced, item retrieval speed is increased and an overall improvement in system performance is optimized. Similarly, in a retail sales situation where products may be presented to consumers in storage areas comprising, for example, aisles of products displayed on shelves, endcaps, etc., the consumer experience may be optimized when a consumer may enter a store, and locate various products of interest, and complete the shopping trip in an expeditious manner. Realizing any improvement in storage location arrangement is very difficult because of the large number of parameters to consider based on, for example, the situation in which the arrangement is utilized, the characteristics of the particular storage environment, the manner which the storage areas are accessed, the consumption of the products in certain storage areas and how popularity may affect demand and consumption, etc. Given that realizing improvements is very difficult, optimization of storage location arrangement is currently improbable due to overall complexity.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.